The Lord said, “I don’t need the
bulls you sacrifice; I don’t need the blood of goats. What I want instead is your true thanks to
God; I want you to fulfill your vows to the Most High. Trust me in your times of trouble, and I will
rescue you, and you will give me glory.”
Of course, those are the last few verses from the Old Testament Psalm
reading that we just heard. And those
are certainly pretty powerful words, especially if you’re a Jew in Old
Testament times or even during the time when Jesus Christ was here with us on
earth as we ourselves are.

In Old Testament times, meaning from
the time of Abraham right through to when Christ was crucified, the system of
sacrifice to God was something that all of the religious traditions were doing,
all of the various pagan groups, as well as all those immediate ancestors of
the first man that our God had communicated with in the desert. And honestly, it was from the pagans that the
Israelites, took those practices, ..such practices are passed on from people to
people. Abraham had been around pagans his entire life
that regularly sacrificed to their gods, so Abraham sacrificed. But Abraham would do it one better, he would
one up the pagans, in that he would be willing to sacrifice his own son Isaac
for his god, this boy for whom all of his hopes and dreams were relying. ..Move forward to the Israelites moving down into
Egypt and then becoming enslaved there, but really we must remember that they
had not always been slaves in Egypt.
When they had first arrived they had been granted very special status
because of Joseph, that son of Jacob who had been sold into slavery by his
brothers due to their jealousy of him.
The brothers, when they get to Egypt themselves because of famine in
their own land, discover that their brother that they’d sold into that slavery
is actually powerful and privileged in this, his adopted land, and then their brother
Joseph lovingly and forgivingly provides for them there. They too become privileged, and naturally adopt
things from their new home. Only after a
few generations do they become enslaved, but then Moses comes to free God’s
people who not too long before had been quite melded-in to the fabric of that
land.

He takes them out into the Sinai
Desert and there he writes a series of laws that the people will live by. And from where does Moses take the concepts
for these laws that he’s writing for his people? He takes them from the house of Pharaoh, the
house from which he was raised. God was
clearly involved with the call, mission and ministry of Moses, yet at the same
time, human traditions evolve from each other and Moses declared the traditions
which became Jewish laws, from those laws that he’d grown up in and already
knew. And those laws had at the
foundation of them, of course, sacrifice, sacrifice as a way to show your
thanks to God, and sacrifice as a way to show your repentance and your guilt. Yes, sacrificing to God has a very deep and
long standing root in humanity, it’s something that we have always done.

Go down through the years, and
thought processes evolve, as they always do, and practices also evolve with new
reasonings, as they always do. There’s
ritual and ceremony, there’s practicality and celebration; but the traditions
of sacrifice remain as they generally always were. A thousand years after Moses gives to his
people the laws that outline those sacrifices, notice that David, in his
prayers to God – which of course are what the Psalms are -, that he realizes
that those sacrifices that have always been made, those sacrifices of God’s
other creatures, sacrifices made by human hands with human understandings, that
they are all superficial. That they’re
all simply a practice that does really nothing for God, but instead may simply
make the human feel better about themselves.
I’m a man, I’ve done something that I know I shouldn’t have, I feel
guilty and I feel ashamed – so Moses’ law tells me to kill a goat or a bull,
and that that will absolve me of my sin, their death will make me feel better. Or perhaps something wonderful has happened
for me, the birth of a child, the success of a challenge. Moses’ law tells me to thank God by killing a
goat or a bull, and then that way I will feel complete, I will feel that I have
done my duty in thanking God. David says
in his prayer that that is not what God wants, ..but for a thousand years no
one practically considers something different – this was the law.

David realizes the superficiality of
these animal sacrifices, and through him we end-up hearing God’s voice saying,
“I don’t need the bulls you sacrifice; I don’t need the blood of goats. What I want, what I need instead is you…”

And then Christ arrives to us and
instead of these being simple words as a part of David’s prayer, Christ makes
these words foundational in his teachings to us. Should we sacrifice to God, give something up
for God? Yes, there should be some way
that we show our God just how and why it is that we are happy and satisfied
with all of the blessings that our God gives over to us.

I know that with our own kids, Hala
and I will do anything we can, anything to make their lives better and more
successful. Anything we can do that we
feel will be good for them, anything that will help them advance forward in
their lives, set them up in a better situation, even in a better situation more
than either one of us were in at the ages that they are in now. And we’ll do that because they are our
children and we love them and want the very best for them. It’s what most all parents do, parents may
act out and react differently to different situations, but I will say that I do
believe that the far, far majority of parents in the world just ultimately want
to see their child succeed, to be happy and healthy, to be vibrant and a
success. And that’s what God simply
wants for us too.

But I’m sure, that as it is for all
parents it is for God as well, in that you just want to be shown a sense
gratitude every once in a while, you want to know that all of your efforts and
all of the things that you yourself have gone without, are not forgotten about
or blown off, or disrespected. A kind
word of thank you, the very simple questions of, “How are you?” and “What can I
do for you?” How many parents would
simply like to hear their child say those words to them, to be shown that all
you have done has not been forgotten about. Do we who are parents, and does God require
animal sacrifices made or something similar to show thankfulness? No, of course not. We say to God in prayer, “What can I do for
you?” And God replies, “Show your thanks
to me, trust me, as I give to you of me, give to me something of yourself.”

A real sacrifice is something that
you give up, something that you give up that has significance to you, in other
words, it’s something that’s important to you and your life. And I will say that probably all parents are
regularly sacrificing from themselves for their children; sometimes it’s sleep,
sometimes it’s food or clothing. I know
that there have been lots of times that I myself and Hala have gone without
something so that our kids could have something they needed or even
wanted. And Lord knows we’re always
sacrificing money to them. I know, it’s
just the way it is for most all people.

But what can be a proper sacrifice from
us to God, to show that we are appreciative for all of the blessings he gives
to us? And remember, God doesn’t want
something that’s superficial. God wants
something from us that’s real, and it doesn’t have to be something big and catastrophic,
it doesn’t need to take lots and lots of time to do.

Today we are performing here in this
service the two sacraments that were mandated to us by Christ himself. We are having the baptism of Sydney Rose
Ellis, and we are having our Eucharistic meal, we say that we are celebrating
baptism and that we are celebrating communion.
And perhaps you have never really considered the word ‘Sacrament’ or
‘Sacramental’, but after our discussion here about ‘sacrifice’, I think you can
realize that the two words sound similar and that it’s actually no coincidence
that they do. And the reason why they do
sound so similar is because they are essentially the same thing.

During the liturgy of the baptism,
we hear words of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for us, that with our baptism
we shall be clothed with Christ, and therefore be united with him in his death
on the cross, and therefore be united with him in life everlasting. By Brian and Alicia bringing forth their
daughter for baptism this morning, they are saying that they will sacrifice of
themselves to see to it that their daughter will know Christ in her life, that
they will actively pursue opportunities for her to be in relationship with God
through Christ. God wants of us, God
wants us to be his, with this sign of baptism, it’s putting this child and
ourselves up to God and saying, ‘We are yours”.

And then while we celebrate
communion, you’ll hear words there as well that commit us to Christ and to the
sacrifice that he made for us. We state
boldly in that liturgy, “Accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving
as a living and holy offering of ourselves, that our lives may proclaim the One
crucified and risen.” With our partaking
of the Eucharist, we are putting ourselves forth and acknowledging that Christ
really did sacrifice himself for us so that we would be reunited with our
Creator in the life to come after this one.
And that that sacrifice, his sacrifice, is represented in the bread as
his body and in the juice of the grape as his blood. God wants us to be his, and so with this act
of communion, we’re putting ourselves up to our God once again and saying, “We
are yours.”

And to some this may seem like a
whole lot of not much. But think of it
this way. Brian and Alicia play with
Sydney Rose, and she smiles and she laughs.
And it’s a reaction, it something that Sydney Rose does automatically
because of what Brian and Alicia are doing.
But how does that smile or that laugh make them feel? Does that smile and laugh seem like a gift? I know that when our boys were at that tender
age, that I’d try to get the boys to laugh because their laugh to me was the
best sound that I could hear. It’s not
much on their part, but it’s everything to the parent.

Coming here to church, celebrating
baptism, celebrating communion, or perhaps it’s something along the lines of
what Paul tells us in Hebrews; “With Jesus’ help, let us continually offer our
sacrifice of praise to God by proclaiming the glory of his name. Don’t forget to do good and to share what you
have with those in need, for such sacrifices are very pleasing to God.”

Do we get it now? It doesn’t take much from us to make our God
feel that he is being glorified, just like it doesn’t take all that much good
for our own children to do to make us proud.
And let me tell ya, sacrificing of ourselves to God is a lot easier than
the sacrifices we make for our children, but of course we do that and often do
that gladly. Let’s not be as spoiled,
unappreciative children to our God, a God that has given to us so much, has
given us so much to be rejoicing about.
I do hear people say that everything they have is because of God, AND
that they are very well aware that by the grace of God, that their bad or
negative challenges in this life are not nearly as bad as they could be, all
because of the grace of God, that things can always be so much worse. Let’s always live like we’re fully aware of
that. If we do that, we will be bringing
glory to God’s name, or in other words, making him proud to be our parent.